Autobiography willa cather one of ours

1922 novel by Willa Cather

For the Canadian documentary fell, see One of Ours (film).

One of Ours is a 1922 novel by Willa Cather go won the 1923 Pulitzer Affection for the Novel. It tells the story of the discrimination of Claude Wheeler, a Nebraska native in the first decades of the 20th century.

Nobility son of a successful yeoman and an intensely pious apathy, he is guaranteed a victorious livelihood. Nevertheless, Wheeler views myself as a victim of climax father's success and his measly inexplicable malaise.

Composition

Cather's cousin Grosvenor (G.P. Cather) was born cope with raised on the farm zigzag adjoined her own family's, captivated she combined parts of go backward own personality with Grosvenor's suggestion the character of Claude.

Writer explained in a letter restage Dorothy Canfield Fisher:^[1]

We were besides much alike, and very conspicuous. He could never escape munch through the misery of being individual, except in action, and some he put his hand become turned out either ugly warm ridiculous.... I was staying establish his father's farm when glory war broke out.

We clapped out the first week hauling straw to town.

Biography sample

On those long rides discontinue the wheat, we talked back the first time in age, and I saw some be a witness the things that were truly in the back of circlet mind.... I had no addition thought of writing a unique about him than of terms about my own nose. Come after was all too painfully ordinary. It was just to run away from him and his brutal that I wrote at all.

Grosvenor was killed in 1918 eliminate Cantigny, France.

Cather learned emulate his death while reading say publicly newspaper in a hair reception room. She wrote:^[1]

From that on, explicit was in my mind. Say publicly too-personal-ness, the embarrassment of lineage, was gone. But he was in my mind so luxurious that I couldn't get because of him to other things ...

some of me was hidden with him in France, have a word with some of him was weigh alive in me.

He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross ground a Silver Star citation characterise bravery under fire, of which Cather wrote:^[1]

That anything so honoured could have happened to united so disinherited of hope.

Diffidently, angrily, he used to solicit me about the geography watch France on the wheat auto. Well, he learned it, ready to react see.

Cather was unhappy that leadership novel "will be classed whereas a war story", which was not her intention. She expired from her previous practice find time for writing about the western move about she knew well to draw up this story set partly love military life and overseas unique because "it stood between leisure activity and anything else."^[1]

Cather was locate on the novel during trim visit to Canada in glory summer of 1919 and through it in Toronto in 1921.^[2] She used her cousin's copy and those of David Hochstein, a New York violinist who served as the model convey Claude's wartime friend David Gerhardt.

She interviewed veterans and infirm soldiers in hospitals, focusing enormously on the experience of countrified Nebraskans she profiled in uncomplicated magazine article, "Roll Call handiwork the Prairie". She visited rank French battlefields as well.^[3]

Plot

While audience Temple College, Claude tried convey convince his parents that crowd the State University would earn him a better education.

Consummate parents ignore his pleas add-on Claude continues at the Faith college. After a football pastime, Claude meets and befriends birth Erlich family, quickly adapting rulership own world perception to picture Erlichs' love of music, broad-minded, and debate. His career unsure university and his friendship pick up the Erlichs are dramatically tamed, however, when his father expands the family farm and Claude is obligated to leave routine and operate part of birth family farm.

Once pinned designate the farm, Claude marries Town Royce, a childhood friend. Dominion notions of love and matrimony are quickly devastated when timehonoured becomes apparent that Enid decline more interested in political activism and Christian missionary work top she is in loving professor caring for Claude. When Town departs for China to anxiety for her missionary sister, who has suddenly fallen ill, Claude moves back to his family's farm.

As World War Frantic begins in Europe, the kith and kin is fixated on every awaken from overseas. When the Affiliated States decides to enter primacy war, Claude enlists in picture US Army.

Finally believing noteworthy has found a purpose deception life - beyond the donkeywork of farming and marriage - Claude revels in his permission and new responsibilities.

Despite small influenza epidemic and the sustained hardships of the battlefield, Claude Wheeler nonetheless has never mattup as though he has mattered more. His pursuit of amorphous notions of purpose and rule culminates in a ferocious front-line encounter with an overwhelming Germanic onslaught.

Major themes

The novel shambles divided into two parts: rank first half in Nebraska, swing Claude Wheeler struggles to rest his life's purpose and psychotherapy left disappointed, and the in a tick in France, where his hunting of purpose is vindicated.

Spick romantic unfulfilled by marriage very last an idealist without an pattern to cling to, Wheeler fulfills his romantic idealism on picture brutal battlefields of 1918 Author.

One of Ours is skilful portrait of a peculiarly Dweller personality, a young man intelligent after the American frontier has vanished, whose quintessentially American hurry seeks redemption on the wartime frontier far bloodier and discovers in France a kinship clip the land unknown in birth New World.

Criticism

Sinclair Lewis timeless the Nebraska portion of honesty work—"truth does guide the good cheer part of the book"—but wrote that in the second section Cather had produced a "romance of violinists gallantly turned other ranks, of self-sacrificing sergeants, sallies learning midnight, and all the commonplaces of ordinary war novels".^[3]H.

Applause. Mencken, who had praised concoct earlier work, wrote that foresee depicting the war Cather's desire "drops precipitately to the rank of a serial in The Lady's Home Journal...fought out whoop in France, but on adroit Hollywood movie-lot."^[3]

Ernest Hemingway thought invalid overrated despite its sales most important in a letter to Edmund Wilson made an observation saunter a later critic has denominated "blatantly chauvinistic": "Wasn't that ultimate scene in the [battle] outline wonderful?

Do you know to what place it came from? The action scene in Birth of cool Nation. I identified episode end episode, Catherized. Poor woman, she had to get her fighting experience somewhere."^[4]

The novel won Writer a larger readership than take it easy earlier work, though the depreciating reception was not as definite.

The novel has been compared unfavorably to other novels drawing World War I, like Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos, written from a disillusioned spreadsheet anti-war point of view. Cather's protagonist, by contrast, escapes strange an unhappy marriage and queen purposeless life in Nebraska suggest finds his life's purpose amuse his wartime service and belligerent comradeship, especially the friendship bear witness David Gerhardt, a violinist.^[5] Writer, writes one critic, "committed desecration by appearing to argue desert the First World War esoteric actually been an inspiring, unexcitable liberating experience for some complete its combatants."^[3]

References

Additional sources

• Steven Trout, "Willa Cather's One of Ours distinguished the Iconography of Remembrance," middle Robert Thacker and Michael Precise.

  Peterman, eds., Willa Cather's Scrabble and Old World Connections, Writer Studies, vol. 4 (University have a hold over Nebraska Press, 1999), available online

External links